Pages

Friday, November 6, 2009

A 3-Legged Dog Dying of Cancer

My dog died. He had cancer of the face.

I took him outside to toss him up into the tree. I grabbed hold of him and my hands were consumed by his dense fur and then by his skin, until they were inside of him. The dog was filled with witchcraft and sea water. I got it all over my hands. I rinsed them off and decided to use tongs instead.

I could not get the dead dog up into the tree. I was going to tell him that he was a bunch of dead weight but then I remembered he was dead and couldn’t hear me and probably wouldn’t have thought it was funny anyway.

I moved the trampoline over from the rusted out ice cream truck.

Using the tongs, I clasped the dog around the neck and the hind leg and bounced him onto the trampoline. He bounced into the air and his fur rained down and his teeth clacked before landing on the trampoline in a heap.

This wasn’t working either.

I went inside to call my friend Ben. Ben was a director of films. His latest was called Sperm Jug, about two twentysomething guys who embark on a cross-country road trip with their grandmother. The movie ends at the Grand Canyon, the guys dousing the old woman in semen before throwing her over the edge. I think it’s a comedy.

Ben was busy but he gave me some sound advice. He said to try cutting the dog into smaller pieces and throwing them up into the tree individually.

I said: “But Ben, what am I supposed to use to chop up the dog?”

And he said: “Use your fucking dick,” and hung up on me.

I didn’t think that would work so I used a pair of poultry shears.

When I was finished chopping up the dog, I hurled the pieces as far up into the tree as I could. The only thing left was the cancer—dark and glittering. I carried that over to the sewer opening on the curb and dropped it down.

Over the next several days, the dog pieces turned black and oozed from the tree like a rain of cinnamon-flavored tar.

I took the dog inside. He climbed into my nightmares, a black shadow beast, and left steaming piles of worm infested waste everywhere.

Then he was gone and it was time to get a new dog.

So I bought a new dog and he was pretty much just like the old dog except he had an extra leg. So I called Ben and asked him what I should do about it. Ben told me I should take it to a butcher and he would get the dog fixed up.